


i should have loved a thunderbird instead

by ssstrychnine



Category: Raven Cycle - Maggie Stiefvater
Genre: First Kiss, Fluff and Angst, Getting Together, M/M, Pie, Post-Blue Lily Lily Blue, Pre-The Raven King
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-04-23
Updated: 2016-04-23
Packaged: 2018-06-03 21:58:28
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,249
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6628252
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ssstrychnine/pseuds/ssstrychnine
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>persephone leaves adam three things: her tarot cards, her voice, and a phone from 2003.</p>
            </blockquote>





	i should have loved a thunderbird instead

Persephone leaves Adam three things. Her voice, in his head as often as Cabeswater, though less insistent that he listen; her tarot cards, spidery and worn soft and awkward to hold, and a cellphone. The phone doesn’t seem to have any particular meaning attached to it. It’s small, it has buttons where most phones now have screens, there is a sticker on the back, a worn and weary sunflower. Calla gives it to Adam, thrusts it at him in fact, the heel of her palm colliding with his chest, so sudden and violent he almost drops it. He stares at the phone left in his hands and then at Calla who has her hands on her hips and red-rimmed eyes. Calla who won’t look at him.

“I won’t have it in the house,” she says to the chipped vase on the table by his elbow, almost an explanation, though not nearly enough of one.

“Thank you,” says Adam, because this is not charity, this is what happens when someone dies, things change hands because they’re meant to or because they fit or because they mean something different than they used to. It’s not the same thing as Gansey giving him a phone would be. Calla shrugs and scowls and stomps back upstairs. Persephone’s death has made her angrier, if that were possible, and her bones seem close to breaking through her skin. It isn’t thick, her skin, it’s _sharp_ , and she cuts anyone who gets too close. 

He doesn’t do anything with the phone for several days after that, scared that there will be something there he’s not supposed to see. Or worse, something he is supposed to see that he’s not ready for. When he finally turns it on it’s because Ronan rolls his eyes and punches him on the arm.

“Calla won’t have left anything there,” he says scornfully, and Adam knows he’s right. There won’t be any part of Persephone still attached to it. Text messages or pixelated photos or saved voicemail. He wonders how much it must have hurt Calla, getting rid of years and years of life from an empty room. He wonders what other things she refused to keep at 300 Fox Way. 

Gansey looks at the phone like he looks at his Glendower artifacts, eyes narrowed and intent behind wire frames. Like there’s some other part to it only he can see. He holds it in both hands, he presses each button, turns it over, taps on the screen with a knuckle. He startles when he cracks the case loose, thinking it’s not something it’s supposed to do. He plays one game of snake and dies immediately and gives it back to Adam. 

“That thing is a fossil, man,” says Ronan. “There are teenagers younger than that phone.” 

“Glendower is younger than that phone,” says Blue.

“I like it,” says Adam, oddly proud of the small, plastic thing. It feels more solid than Gansey’s iPhone or Ronan’s black, shiny not-iPhone. It feels like the sort of thing that might survive a nuclear blast. 

“I had a phone like that,” says Noah, wistful, but when he takes it it falls through his hands and for a moment he is frozen in place and then he’s gone entirely. No one blinks anymore, except Blue, who pets the empty air where his head had just been. 

“Let me run it over,” says Ronan, stepping into the space Noah left behind, holding out his hand, but Adam picks it up and puts it in his pocket instead. 

Ronan is the first person to call him. It’s past midnight and Adam is studying, getting grease stains on second-hand textbooks, allowing himself to be something other than entirely put together. There’s no one there who might judge a frayed sweater or calloused hands. The phone vibrates with such force it falls off the wine crate that serves as his bedside table. For one small and terrifying moment he thinks it’s going to be Persephone, her leaves-falling voice telling him what to listen for in Cabeswater, and when he answers his voice _creaks_. 

“You sound like Malory,” says Ronan.

“Lynch,” says Adam stupidly. “What do you want?”

“Nothing.”

“Why did you call then?” 

“I wanted to see if that phone was still alive.”

“Satisfied?” 

“Mm.”

Ronan hangs up before Adam can and he’s annoyed about it for a moment, like he’s missed an opportunity to prove he doesn’t care. But of course Ronan uses up most of his energy doing that, Adam only gets whatever’s left over. He frowns at the phone, places it carefully back on the crate, picks up his textbook again. Cabeswater is behind his eyes, casting shadows over the pages, the curling fronds of ferns and the cracked glass pattern of water under sun, things that aren’t anywhere near his small part of St. Agnes. 

“I’m busy,” he murmurs. 

“You aren’t,” says Persephone, peering at him from under her hair. 

Adam shuts his textbook with a snap, puts it in his school bag for the morning. She is sitting at the foot of his bed, holding up three fingers. He rubs at his eyes, grinds his knuckles against the sockets, spreading smudges of grease across his cheekbones. When he opens them she is gone and he takes out her cards and deals himself three, always three. They don’t tell him anything he doesn’t already know but he is exhausted by it all the same. He wants, suddenly and all at once, not to be alone, not to always be alone. In his small small room with its sloped ceiling. With a forest in his head and magic on his palms. On the wine crate his phone buzzes again and he answers it without hesitation.

“Ronan,” he says.

“Parrish,” says Ronan.

Ronan has a story for him, something about having call time that’s going to expire, something about needing to use it up, something about knowing Adam will be awake because they have a history test in a couple of days. It feels tissue-paper flimsy, that Ronan should care about wasted money like that, and he sounds like he knows it too, but neither of them say anything. Adam is just glad to know that there is someone real in the world other than him. It doesn’t matter that it’s Ronan, it doesn’t matter that Ronan likes him, it just matters that he’s there.

Adam lies back on his bed and shuts his eyes while they talk, feeling like that might make it easier to hear him, shutting out everything but Ronan’s voice. He hadn’t thought about using a phone with one ear deaf and it’s echoey and strange, like listening to someone under water. Their voices get quieter as the night stretches on and there are long silences and soft words but that doesn’t matter either. Neither of them are talkative at school, at Monmouth, in Cabeswater, so there’s no reason to be something else over the phone.

“I do have to study,” Adam says finally, close to two in the morning, knowing he won’t study now but feeling like it’s important to say all the same.

“Don’t let me keep you,” says Ronan, _sneers_ Ronan, sharp and angry suddenly but trying hard to pretend he’s not. Adam doesn’t say anything, he listens to the sounds of movement down the line, the sound of Ronan not hanging up but taking a step, a soft noise from Chainsaw, another step and he still hasn’t hung up and his anger is dulled by the silence.

“Call me tomorrow,” says Adam when the quiet gets too long, even for them. “If you still have minutes to waste.” 

School is the same as it always is. They are three boys, sharp and ancient and golden. Ronan doesn’t have a pen and doesn’t take the one Gansey offers him and the same thing has happened a thousand times and will happen a thousand more. _Except Gansey won’t be here much longer_ , whispers Persephone or Cabeswater or some other unnamed thing crowded into the crawlspace of Adam’s head. He imagines offering Ronan a pen himself and it’s such a small thing but it seems so impossible that he gets caught on it and stumbles a little. And of course Gansey is there and he pulls Adam along with just a look and that almost makes it worse. How much longer until his death catches up to him? How will they exist without him? Sometimes Adam feels like he was thought into being by Gansey, like they were all there because Gansey willed it. Blue and Noah and Ronan. Glendower.

Adam doesn’t use his phone at school. It’s more evidence of what everyone already knows he is, a scholarship student, a dirty word. It asks for the kind of attention he doesn’t want. There is no one who might text him that isn’t already there anyway, unless Noah figures out how to send ghost texts. If Blue had a phone she would text exclusively in emoji that his phone wouldn’t pick up, he thinks, and he would be charmed by it.

They haven’t been back to the caves. Everything seems so close and so impossible and it’s been real for a long time but not like it was that night. They rode on death that night; Blue walked on water.

“People _died_ ,” says Gansey, pacing the endless floors of Monmouth. Blue is sitting on his bed with her knees drawn up under her chin. She has the edge of her thumb in her mouth and she’s very carefully not looking at him. 

“ _We_ didn’t kill anyone,” says Ronan, but he’s chewing on one of his leather bands and _he_ is very carefully not looking at anyone. 

Adam watches Noah who is standing by the patchwork windows. Bottle glass is staining the shadowy smudge across his face green and he’s walking his fingers through the dust. Noah is dead and Persephone is dead, and Jesse Dittley and Kavinsky and their old Latin teacher and unknowable others, swallowed by the dark. Blue can’t remember a lot of what happened, post-traumatic whatsit, she calls it, and Maura is keeping it close and Artemus won’t talk to anyone. The Grey Man might have helped them but he’s giving Maura some space for her thoughts and that means everyone attached to 300 Fox Way too. It all feels older than they are, old and impossible and inevitable, and Adam wants it to be done with, except of course when it’s done with Gansey will be dead.

Ronan calls him again that night. It’s not so late, only twilight, and Adam is on a break at work and he watches Ronan’s name on the small screen and wonders how he could know that, know exactly when his break is. He lets it ring for several seconds before answering and he supposes it serves him right when it’s the murder squash song and not Ronan’s voice that he hears first. 

“No,” he says into the noise. He can hear Ronan laughing and Chainsaw screeching and he shouldn’t be smiling but he is. The song cuts off eventually and he can hear when Ronan picks up his phone, the sound of his breathing, muffled plastic and skin.

“You didn’t hang up,” he says. “I’m almost impressed.” 

“It’s somehow better than the radio here.” 

“Who listens to the _radio_?” 

“Boyd, apparently,” says Adam. “ _Bebop and beyond with Mr. Jazz._ I don’t know how to turn it off; it’s the only station it gets.”

“Oh my _god_ ,” Ronan barks out a laugh. “You’re welcome then.”

There is a silence then and Adam watches the clock. Three minutes until he has to go back. Three minutes and twenty six seconds, twenty five. He shuts his eyes. He feels for Cabeswater and the endlessness of it makes three minutes seem forever. 

“Are you running out of minutes?” he asks, because he is. 

“Gansey turned his phone off,” says Ronan, his voice all scorn and dark humour. “To encourage me to leave my room, he says.”

“Dick,” murmurs Adam.

“ _Dick_ ,” agrees Ronan. 

“I have to get back,” says Adam and the dial tone sounds before he can take another breath. 

When he finishes work he has seven voicemail messages. Most of them are the murder squash song, some of them have Noah in them, one of them has Gansey. All of them _feel_ like Ronan. Adam listens to them all the way through and then he saves them, because they feel something like proof that he did not lose everyone when he lost his parents. Proof of other things too. Adam stays up studying a little later than he usually does that night but Ronan doesn’t call him again. In his dreams Persephone holds up three fingers and he moves wet stones and the ley line shivers and cracks. 

On Friday, after their history test and before Ronan and Noah have roped him into something dangerous or Gansey has roped him into something studious, Adam goes to 300 Fox Way to see Blue. He feels like their edges are still blurred and he wants their relationship to be something solid instead of held-hands and breaths and barely held back anger. He thinks about the way they’d met; her spiky and him clumsy and Gansey clumsier still. He thinks about her now, the way she is a part of them all, even Ronan, solid and unbreakable. Still spiky. Still pretty in a way that makes Adam’s palms itch. Calla opens the door when he knocks and he knows he ought to say something but she turns away before he can even open his mouth.

“Blue’s out back,” she says. “Find me when you’re done with her, I have something for you.” And she’s gone before he can ask what it is and why.

Blue is sitting on a tree root and she is painting her toenails a mossy sort of green and she smiles when she sees him. 

“Good,” she says. “You can do my right hand.” 

He takes the bottle of polish when she holds it out to him and then he takes her unpainted hand. She is warm and her hand is small and his cheeks burn a little but only as much as they would if he held anyone's hand. She is looking at him with this gentle expression, a cat with velvet paws, like she knows that she is safe with him, and it means more than he could ever say. He paints her nails carefully, he thinks of tuning a car or filling in the answer bubbles on a computer-read test or lining himself up with Cabeswater. She closes her eyes and turns her face up and catches the one spot of bright sunlight that makes it through the beech’s canopy. 

“You don’t like me anymore,” she says, not opening her eyes, a statement of fact. 

“No,” says Adam quietly. It feels strange to say out loud, because the way he’d felt about Blue had been so sweet and loud and fleeting. It’s harder to let go of the feeling than he’d anticipated, even though he knows that it has changed. Perhaps it will always be there, stuck under his ribs like a cramp, once upon a time he liked a girl called Blue and she couldn’t kiss him ( _wouldn’t_ kiss him). It’s a hurt, but it’s a small hurt, and smaller still for saying it out loud. 

When he’s finished with her nails he lets go of her hand. She opens her eyes and smiles at him and then she looks at her fingernails and smiles wider. The pinky finger is a little smudgy and the thumbnail isn’t quite painted to the edges but to Adam it seems more than acceptable. She blows on the nails gently. Adam shifts so he’s next to her on her tree root and leans his elbows on his knees. 

“Have you told Ronan about Gansey?” she asks then, in between puffs.

“Have you told Gansey?” 

Her expression twists and her shoulders drop and she tugs at one of the clips in her hair, pulling it out and pressing her fingers to the metal teeth. It’s something about the way she does this, the distance in her eyes and Gansey’s name next to Ronan’s and her hair falling across her face, that puts it all in line in Adam’s head. If Blue were to kiss her true love, he would die. Those who walk the corpse road on St Mark’s Eve will die within a year. The new way that they’re close, the new way Gansey is around her, the very careful way they never touch. Adam’s hurt gets a little sharper, gets caught on Gansey who is golden, Gansey who gets everything Adam wants and with none of the effort, Gansey the Aglionby king. It’s an unfair anger and one he will always have and he swallows it then because Blue is smiling; this shaky, wavering smile that is so brave it cuts through anything he might have said. 

Calla gives him a pie. He is told it’s one of Persephone’s pies, which are usually eaten as soon as they’re baked, but sometimes, when the house is impossibly empty, she makes one and puts it in the freezer. For times when she’s not there. Calla finally looks at him when she says this, pie dish in hand, eyes fierce like a predatory bird that’s spotted something small and soft and edible. 

“Don’t forget to cut slits in the top,” she says dangerously, like she isn’t talking about baked goods at all. “No one wants a soggy crust.” 

He sits the pie on the passenger seat of the Hondayota and he glances at it as he drives back to St. Anges. He wonders if a convection oven can cook a pie. He wonders if there is such a thing as psychic energy and whether it might leak into a pie when a psychic made one. What would a pie made by Persephone do to him? In the back seat she smiles, lowers her eyes.

“I’m flattered,” she says, “but it’s just a pie.” 

Back at his place he changes out of his uniform and squints at the convection oven. He turns it up as high as it will go and cuts small holes into the top of the pastry, just as Calla had ordered. There are tiny pastry leaves on top and the edges are crimped like the pinching of fingers. He’d taken the oven from the factory when they’d got a better one for the staff room but it hasn’t done much for him except take up desk space. There are parts of being an adult he still doesn’t understand, he still feels too young for, and having a functioning kitchen is one of them. He lives on breakfast drinks and protein bars and ramen. He lives on petrol fumes and steam. When Ronan calls him, halfway into baking, he answers immediately.

“I need you,” he says, all at once, and there’s a very long silence where Adam realises what he’s said and who he’s said it to and what that might mean. “I have...” he starts again, struggling, “I have a pie that needs to be eaten.”

“A pie,” says Ronan, slow and cautious and disbelieving.

“Possibly a psychic pie.” 

“You went to Blue’s?” 

“You should bring plates… and a knife.”

“Do you really have a pie?” 

“I think it’s apple.”

“Is Gansey invited?” Ronan asks and Adam doesn’t know quite what to say to that. It’s not a question that’s ever been asked before, they’re tied in knots so tightly. It should be easy; bring Gansey, pick up Blue, call up Noah from the ether. They won’t all fit in Adam’s room but he knows that doesn’t matter, they’ll figure it out, they’ll tuck Blue into the desk drawer and Noah will perch, boneless, on top of the mini-fridge. But now that he’s being asked he isn’t sure it’s what he wants. He and Ronan have been alone together more often recently. At the Barns, in the church. And part of it was to deal with Greenmantle but most of it was for something else. Something undefinable, something less like selling their souls and more like stitching a wound. 

“Um,” says Adam, after too long a pause. “Yes, yeah. Bring whoever.”

Ronan hangs up and Adam frowns at the phone in his hand. He throws it onto his bed, he checks the pie again, he paces the length of the room and then turns and paces it again. He isn’t sure what he’s doing, talking to Ronan on the phone, inviting him to eat pie. Maybe he’s doing it because Ronan likes him and Blue doesn’t. Maybe it’s because he _likes_ that Ronan likes him. Maybe it’s because Ronan is a boy with a raven on his shoulder that he plucked from a dream. Adam might be just like Gansey after all, collecting artifacts. But Gansey doesn’t check to make sure all of his artifacts like him best.

“Shut up,” he says, when Cabeswater greys out his vision at the edges. He knows exactly how Cabeswater feels about Ronan Lynch.

When Ronan arrives the pie is cooling on top of the oven. There is a ratty tea towel draped over it and the whole room is apples and cinnamon and Adam isn’t sure that he can trust it. Ronan kicks the door once and then opens it when he doesn’t get a reply and he’s scowling, of course, and Chainsaw is on his shoulder. She makes a clacking noise with her beak that Adam thinks might be a greeting and then she’s gone, swallowed by the dark of church rafters.

“It’s her birthplace,” says Ronan, and he pushes past Adam and falls into his desk chair. Gansey isn’t with him. Adam bites his tongue.

Ronan has brought two chipped plates edged in mustard coloured daisies. It’s immediately obvious that they’ve come from the Barns, they’re ugly in a well-loved way, in a mismatched way, like no one in that house would ever consider throwing them away because they were imperfect. He hands them to Adam who sets them on top of the oven, next to the pie, and then he hands Adam a knife, handle first. 

“Four and twenty ravens,” says Ronan, tipping the chair back onto two legs, shutting his eyes. “You sure it’s not poisoned?” 

“No,” says Adam, inspecting the pie closely, like it might tell him where to cut first. “Calla gave it to me.” 

“I’ll wait to see if you die first.”

So Adam cuts himself a piece and eats some and doesn’t die and Ronan accepts his own piece gravely and forgoes a fork. The apples have a bite to them, they’re tart in the centre and caramel at the edges. The pastry is golden and crumbly and no worse for spending time in the freezer. Ronan licks his fingers. Adam shuts his eyes. They abandon the plates and Ronan joins Adam on his bed and they eat from the dish. Adam makes him use a fork and they clash sometimes, like metal fillings in teeth, and they should really have vanilla ice cream, but it’s good enough even missing something. 

They eat more than half and Adam could eat more but he knows it’s more sensible to save some for the weekend, to blunt the edges if he gets hungry, he is good at stretching leftovers. Ronan stays on the bed with him, leaning against the wall, his long legs hanging over the edge, crossed at the ankles, his eyes closed. Adam looks at him, the rise and fall of his chest, his hands resting over his stomach, the worn leather bands at his wrist. His eyelashes are long and dark and they add shadows more than exhaustion to the sockets of his eyes. It’s strange to see him without tension in his face; his forehead smooth, his teeth not clenched so hard it looks like his jaw bone might come through his skin. The blades he draws with every breath. He looks younger than he ever allows himself to look. He looks younger than he does when he’s asleep, pulling his dreams into life. 

“What’s going to happen after this?” he asks, not opening his eyes, sighing the words out like they’ve waited a long time to be spoken.

“I don’t know,” says Adam. He wants to say that Gansey will be dead but he can’t. He wants to say he will save Gansey, because what’s the point of this, of _him_ , if he can’t, but it’s impossible to say it in a way that won’t tear Ronan to shreds. So he says he doesn’t know, which is true too. “I want it done already.”

“And then we all go back to whatever we were before,” Ronan laughs. “You’ll go back to your loving parents and I’ll go back to mine.” 

Adam doesn’t take the bait, he gets to his feet instead. Ronan watches him as he folds foil carefully over the remains of the pie, rinses off the plates in the sink, folds the tea towel and puts it in the same drawer as his meagre cutlery. He dusts off his hands, curls his fingers into his palms. He wants to hurt Ronan suddenly, make him regret his cynicism, his dark humour, his self-loathing. Maybe that’s why he wanted Ronan here alone, so he could break himself on Ronan's brittle edges. He sits at his desk and kicks at the toes of Ronan’s boots. 

“I’m glad you came alone,” he says, trying to keep his voice light, like he isn’t being deliberately vicious.

“You’re such a piece of shit,” says Ronan, shaking his head, smiling like he hates himself, seeing through Adam immediately. He stands and Adam stands and they’re so close in his small room, just hand spans between them. Ronan looks angry and wary and tired, not young anymore, older than anyone, older than dreams. All that Adam can think is that what he said must be true because when has Ronan ever thought he deserves to be treated better? Adam holds his apology behind his teeth and sways a little closer and Ronan shakes his head again and barges passed him, knocking their shoulders together, somewhere between clumsy and deliberate. 

Adam lets him go, though his skin feels thinner without him in the room. He straightens the cover of his bed, tugging out the wrinkles, turning it into someplace untouched by living things. He checks his phone, listens to a rambling voice message from Gansey, who treats his inbox like a place to store his thoughts. It’s ley lines and Glendower and Cabeswater, like it always is, and if Adam closes his eyes he can pretend it’s a conversation they had before all of it became real. He wouldn’t go back, he realises, not for an ear that works or a world where his mother still spoke to him. 

Ronan calls him in the early hours of the morning. Adam has been awake all night, sorting through things that don’t need sorting, his school books, his applications for colleges, and then filing what does need filing, away under his bed. He isn’t surprised to see that Ronan is calling, he thinks perhaps he’s spent the whole night waiting for it, knowing he doesn’t deserve to hear his voice again but wanting it so much all he can do is fold sharp creases into paper. He answers.

“You’re not asleep,” says Ronan, sounding surprised.

“Neither are you,” murmurs Adam. “Did you call to leave a message? I can hang up and you can try again, if you like.”

Ronan snorts. “Shut up,” he says, and he’s Ronan so he’s growling but there’s something warm in there, under everything, and Adam finds himself smiling. 

They talk about nothing. Chainsaw has been unsettled since leaving the church. Adam has been hearing Persephone in his deaf ear. Ronan is awake because he dreamt so much sand in his bed he’s had to relocate to the floor. Adam watches the light go from black to grey through the small rectangle windows set high in the sloped ceiling. He feels full up with the night, like he’s pulling all the black into himself, leeching the sky to grey. He feels cotton-mouthed and slow but Ronan stays on the other line, drifting in and out of silence. 

“I’m not...” says Ronan, close to the end of his voice. “I’m not trying to make you… feel the same.” 

“I’m not sure that I don’t,” says Adam, barely a whisper. 

They fall silent, because it’s so early in the morning that none of this can possibly count as real. Adam lies back on his bed and he imagines that Ronan is doing the same, except he’s on the floor of Monmouth, escaping the terrain of his dreams. There is something about being awake for so long that makes you feel invincible, and Adam is sure that if Glendower came to him, in that moment, he would be able to ask him for anything.

Adam sleeps for most of Saturday. He wakes up in the early afternoon to his phone, shaking itself off the wine crate yet again. He thinks it will be Ronan. He can’t remember most of what they talked about but he thinks it will be Ronan because he wants it to be Ronan. Instead it’s Gansey, loud and excited like he doesn’t even have to sleep, he just plugs himself in to charge once in awhile, and Adam isn’t disappointed exactly, just tired.

“ _What_?” says Adam, cutting him off, rubbing sleep from his eyes. “What are you talking about, Gansey?” 

“I’m coming to get you and then we’re going to Nino’s.”

“Oh, it seemed more important than that.”

“Wake up, old man,” he hears Ronan say in the distance, low and amused, and that does wake him up a little more actually and he thinks he might be on the edges of accepting why.

“Tell Lynch—”

“I can hear you, _old man_.”

“Tell _Lynch_ … I hope he never gets the sand out of his bed.”

“Cutting,” says Gansey. Ronan is laughing.

“See you soon,” says Adam, and he hangs up.

He eats pie for a late lunch and later breakfast. He eats pie and he dresses in his softest, oldest t-shirt, feeling like it's the type of day that requires it. He’s tired and the sun is quiet gold and everything feels a little unreal still, like it had at four in the morning with his eyes closed and Ronan at the end of the line. Cabeswater is silent and Persephone is silent and Adam has only his thoughts, uncluttered and clear. 

They’re going to Nino’s and after that Adam is going to talk to Ronan. About Gansey, about Blue and Gansey. About himself and the place he’s given Ronan in his life. It’s strange to know this, to know that this will happen and not to know what will happen afterwards. He tells himself it doesn’t matter and turns his attention to his room. He fusses with his duvet cover instead, he washes Ronan’s plates and stacks them neatly, he straightens the books on his desk. It means a lot to him that his small space doesn’t look like it’s wanting anything, doesn’t look like it’s anything other than exactly the way it should be, all the way down to its bones. It makes him feel like he could be that too.

Ronan comes to get him when they arrive. He kicks the door and Adam opens it and for a moment they just stare at one another. Ronan looks guarded, his chin tilted, his hands in his pockets, so carefully unconcerned that Adam knows he’s fighting with something in his head. He looks like a drawing in ink, all straight lines and stark elegance. Behind him are the stained glass windows of the church and for one absurd moment Adam thinks this must be what it feels like to look at a saint.

“Your plates,” he says, pushing through his thoughts, his voice coming out breathless.

“I don’t care,” says Ronan. “Come on, Parrish.” 

They walk through the church together, not touching. The stained glass colours the shadows and Adam thinks he sees Noah, jumping pew to pew, but he’s gone when he turns to look.

“He thinks he’s punishing me,” says Ronan.

“What for?”

“Not doing something he thinks I should.”

He doesn't offer any explanation and Adam doesn't ask but somehow he knows it’s about him. The air feels static suddenly, hot and dry and bright, and Adam watches Ronan’s hands, the scabs on his knuckles, the squared angles of his thumbs meeting his wrists. He thinks it would be so easy, to reach out and touch him, press his palm to Ronan’s and then curl their hands together. He thinks he wants to. He reaches across what feels like a thousand miles of space and Ronan pushes open the church doors and Adam touches his hand and the sunlight blinds them both and Adam’s fingers are at Ronan’s wrist and he turns, frowning. Adam pulls his hand back, suddenly afraid, and he moves past Ronan and climbs into the back of the Pig, his heart beating fast and heavy.

At Nino’s, they crowd into their booth, Adam, Gansey, Ronan. Adam can still feel Ronan on his hands and it’s suddenly more than it was before, when it was just a thought. It’s real and now all he can think about is what might happen next. The different ways they might touch. It’s both exhilarating and mortifying and Adam can’t keep still it's so present in his mind. 

Blue offers a brief distraction, and then Noah, who appears when she brings them a jug of water. She looks at them like they are hers and they are, really, but Adam might be glad she never kissed him.

“I’m happy you're here,” she says to Noah and he ducks his head, catches her hand and squeezes it. They don’t have to make room for him in the booth, he just fits, in and out of space. “If you boys make trouble for me, I’ll get you banned for life,” she says to the rest of them, and she disappears out the back. 

Adam pours them all water and it clears his head a little. Enough for him to notice Gansey, who is not behaving at all like Gansey should. He’s almost vibrating with something held back or something discovered. Not happy or unhappy, just _more_ , pulling the light from the room, smiling a little too wide. Looking back, he’d been strange in the Pig too, quiet, strained, but Adam had been too distracted by his own thoughts to notice much beyond the way Ronan was leaning his elbow against the window. Adam tries to catch Gansey’s eye but he slides away, water under oil, and he tries hard not to take it personally. It will be something Glendower, something Cabeswater, and Adam hopes it’s their next move. He will talk to Ronan, they will find Glendower, he will save Gansey. He lines this up in his head and it seems so simple, three bullet points, three roads on a map, but it still feels an age away. 

Their pizzas come and Gansey still isn’t talking about whatever’s on his mind. He tears napkins to pieces and then pizza to pieces and he seems unusually focussed on Noah. Ronan, sitting in between them, is looking wild around the eyes and Adam is waiting for him to bolt but he just chews on the leather at his wrist. Of course he won’t look at Adam either and Adam kind of wants to reach across the table and pull his hand from his mouth but he also kind of wants to scream at all of them. He keeps quiet only because he’s not sure Blue was joking when she said she’d get them kicked out. No, he keeps quiet because he always keeps quiet. He eats his pizza and he fumes silently and he wonders if Blue would yell at them if they tipped her too much. Probably. He would. 

Gansey comes out of his trance when Ronan goes to the bathroom. As soon as he’s out of sight he turns to Adam and his expression turns desperate, more desperate than Adam has ever seen him, and he knows what he’s going to say before he says it. 

“Blue told me.” His voice comes out raw, like the words have been pulled from his throat by force. For a moment Adam doesn’t know what to say. He looks at Noah, miserable and faint, and then back to Gansey who has run his hand through his hair so many times it’s sticking out in tufts. _Like Blue_ , Adam thinks wildly, and he shuts his eyes for a second to clear his head. 

“I’m going to fix it,” he says then, low down, hissed through his teeth, with as much determination behind it as he can muster. “I’ll ask Glendower for you, I’ll stop it.” 

“I know,” says Gansey. “Of course I’ve thought about that, but I think... I think I’m already pushing my luck.” 

“It _won’t happen_ ,” Adam snaps. “I’ll make sure it won’t.” 

“Make sure what won’t?” asks Ronan. 

Adam shuts his eyes. He thinks of what it had felt like to touch Ronan’s hand, of what it’s done to him just by keeping silent. Ronan is frowning like he knows that what’s being talked about is something bigger and worse than he could imagine. Ronan who dreams up dead copies of himself. Adam stands up and Ronan steps back and it _hurts_ but he knows it’s what he deserves.

“I’m going to die,” says Gansey, still sitting, looking at his hands. Ronan blinks.

“You’re _not_ going to die,” says Adam desperately. “You’re not—” 

“Blue saw me on St. Mark’s Eve, at the church, where the spirits of the people who are going to die within the year walk the corpse road. The ley line. Blue... Blue saw me.” 

“But I’m going to fix it,” whispers Adam. 

“You _knew_?” asks Ronan, somehow not even angry, just staggered and confused. Adam doesn’t move, doesn’t even blink, he tries to put everything back together in his head, three bullet points, three roads on a map, but Ronan is looking at him like a stranger and none of the pieces seem to fit anymore. 

When Ronan does bolt, Gansey stops Adam from following. He grabs Adam’s arm and pulls him back into his seat and Gansey doesn’t _do_ that, doesn’t throw his weight around like that, but his grip is iron and he looks like he’s already dead and Adam can’t leave him. He stays put, he holds his hands in fists so tight he can feel his knuckles shifting. Across the table Noah is frantic, pulling at his hair. The smudge at his cheek is livid and raw and it makes Adam think he’d like to break something and then he thinks he’d like to be sick. 

“He doesn’t have his car,” Noah says mournfully. Gansey sighs, presses a finger to the bridge of his nose. 

“I’m going to get him,” he says. “Just me. Adam, you stay and wait for Blue, see if she can give you her bike or...something. I’ll talk to you tomorrow.” 

“Gansey—” starts Adam.

“I’m serious, Adam, I have to talk to Ronan about this too.” 

“He’s not good at hating people. He thinks he is but...” says Noah, shrugging, “he can’t just hate you.”

Adam doesn’t say anything; he sits back in the booth, he pulls at his fingers until the joints click. Gansey is looking at him, waiting for something, and Adam tries to focus on the most important parts of this. Ronan and Gansey existed before he did, there is a history there that’s long and deep and painful. Adam is a part of it now too, but he wasn’t always, he wasn’t when Ronan was at his worst. Gansey needs this time. Gansey who has just learned that he will die.

“Right,” says Adam, finally, giving up because he has to. “Sure.”

“Tomorrow,” says Gansey, getting to his feet. “I’ll call you tomorrow and we’ll come up with a plan.”

Adam wants to laugh. He _has_ a plan. He talks to Ronan, they find Glendower, he saves Gansey. Perhaps it’s not completely broken yet, perhaps he can put the pieces back together. He’ll talk to Ronan, they’ll find Glendower, he’ll save Gansey. Except that Ronan, whatever his capacity for hate is, hates him, _has_ to hate him, so the first part’s gone. He sighs and then he nods and Gansey nods and when he holds out a fist, Adam knocks it because he has to. He watches Gansey leave, pause at the counter where Blue is, touch her arm. He talks to her quietly for a moment and she looks sad and tired and when she looks over at Adam he looks away. 

Noah stays with him, twitching under the cheap, white diner lights. He tips over the salt shaker and draws the curved ley lines in the puddle of granules that spill out from the top and then draws them again, and again. He stops when Blue comes over, he blinks and he’s something more, almost just a boy with a smudge on his cheek and nail-bitten fingers. Blue slides into the booth next to Adam, lets Noah move around to rest his head on her shoulder. She nudges at Adam with her elbow.

“It’s going to be alright,” she says, though her voice wavers up and up. “He’s not gonna… _I’m_ not gonna… he’s… he’s...” 

“He’s Gansey,” says Adam and Blue sniffs once, just once.

“Yes he is,” she says. 

Blue’s shift ends when Nino’s closes and Adam is still there. Noah had disappeared a little earlier but it had been because he wanted to and not because he couldn’t keep a grip on himself and Adam tries to pretend like that’s a sign of things to come. He follows Blue out the back, weaving around benches and precarious stacks of pizza boxes and the roaring brick oven, charred black and intimidating. Outside, she bikes around him in loops while he walks, back to Fox Way. He composes a thousand texts to Ronan and Blue makes him read out every one and rejects all of them.

“Just call him,” she says. “Later, I mean. He’s a piece of shit but he’s obviously _your_ piece of shit. I think he’ll answer, once he’s made you sweat a little.”

“He’s not my anything,” says Adam, trying not to think about _sweat_ , but she just laughs. 

He admires her hugely then, the way she is riding in circles, taking her hands off the handlebars, throwing her arms wide and laughing. Like true love and true death aren’t stuck to her shadow, biting at her heels. And none of it’s real, he knows better than most how to keep terrible things hidden, but she wears her her burden so light it’s like it’s not there. 

Maura has tea brewing before they get there. 

“Skullcap,” she says. “To stop you mourning your friend before he’s dead.”

Blue scowls and it looks like she’s going to start something then, turn tea into a shouting match with Adam in the middle, sat at the kitchen bench, but apparently she changes her mind. She just sighs and dissolves a teaspoon of honey into her mug and sighs again. Adam thinks Maura looks relieved and sad and tired all at once. He thinks of his own mother, her silhouette at the kitchen window, and then he gulps his tea so fast he scalds his throat. He doesn’t want to be there. Amongst the particular familial feeling of 300 Fox Way. It’s dark outside and Ronan hasn’t called him and it’s getting colder and Ronan _won’t_ call him and he doesn’t want to bike home in the rain either. It will be colder at the church, but that’s a cold that belongs to him.

Calla comes in while they’re drinking their tea, her shoulders back like she’s looking for a fight. Maura purses her lips and Calla’s shoulders come down a little and her eyebrows lose some of their spike and she leans against the wall instead of throwing fists. 

“I’ll drive you home,” she says to Adam. “Mother and daughter need to talk about their terrible taste in men.” 

“ _Calla_ ,” say both mother and daughter, Maura with warning and Blue with outrage, and Calla grins and pushes herself up from the wall. 

“Come on, boy.” 

Adam thanks Maura for the tea and Blue for the company and he follows Calla out of the house. He feels strange, walking with her; she’s scary in a way that reminds him a little bit of Ronan and a lot of a natural disaster. A tornado before it touches down or a heat wave, stark and dry and deadly. He sits in the car with his hands in his lap, holding his phone like his touch might make Ronan call him. Calla does not drive like a natural disaster, she is careful and deliberate. She slows down at orange lights and checks her blind spot and she keeps her hands at ten and two. It might be that she drives differently when she’s on her own. Ronan drives differently when he’s on his own. 

“Persephone,” says Calla, halfway through the drive, startling Adam badly. “Why did she care about you?” 

“I… I think she thought that someone needed to keep an eye on me,” he says slowly. “With Cabeswater attached to me, she thought I was dangerous.”

“You are dangerous,” snaps Calla. “More dangerous than that snake of yours.” 

Adam stays silent, locks and unlocks his phone. He wants to tell her he’s sorry that he knew Persephone was dead before she did. He wants to tell her that Ronan has never been a snake. He wants to tell her that she isn’t one either. He locks and unlocks his phone again. He is too young to tell her any of those things, even old as he feels, even with a forest at his fingertips. Calla will still be angry.

“She told me she wouldn’t look,” she says then, her voice breaking, just a little, but so unlike Calla that it sounds far worse. Her eyes are fierce on the road but the corners of her mouth are deep, holding back an avalanche, a tornado, a heatwave.

“I would have said the same,” says Adam quietly. “I would have told Ronan that.” 

Calla looks at him sharply, a flash of eyes, fever-bright, and then back to the road. Adam’s head is throbbing and his heart is throbbing and he wants to scratch this day out of time and forget about all of it. Except touching Ronan’s hand. Except the way Ronan looked under coloured glass. When they get to the church Adam sits for a moment while the car idles. Ronan had pushed open those doors and Adam had touched his hand and bolted. Calla is frowning and her hands are off the wheel and in her lap and they look like they’re not a part of her, just objects that have lost their purpose.

“Thank you,” says Adam, trying not to sound awkward and sounding worse because of it. “For the ride.” 

“Don’t waste what she gave you,” says Calla. Adam almost says _you too_ but he bites it back and nods instead and gets out of the car. She’s gone before he’s inside, tyres screaming out her anger to the night, not so careful on her own. 

Adam calls Ronan while he unlocks his door and he doesn’t pick up so he calls again. He thinks that once upon a time it would have been easy to leave Ronan to fight things out with himself, but it isn’t anymore. He frowns at the daisy plates, still on top of the oven, and considers smashing one but can’t get passed just picking it up. He lies on his bed instead and calls again and then again and then again.

It’s after midnight when Ronan finally picks up and he doesn’t say anything, just waits. Adam trips on his tongue trying to get something out, just in case he changes his mind.

“Ronan,” he says, too loud, too harsh. “I want... I want you here. I would come to you, I _would_ , but I have no petrol. I’m sorry. Please.”

Ronan makes a noise, halfway between a sigh and a groan, like it’s taking everything in him just to stay on the line. Adam holds his breath. 

“Alright,” he says and then he’s gone and Adam shuts his eyes to keep hold of his voice a little longer.

While Adam waits he deals from Persephone’s deck, wanting some hint as to how this will go and how he can prepare himself. Three cards, three more, another three. At the third lot, Cabeswater prickles at his fingers, scolding him, perhaps, for being so fickle, and he gives up. He is tired and his energy is spent and he can’t make sense of the cards anyway. He thinks that Calla would scold him too and he stacks the deck carefully and puts it in it’s velvet bag. It’s tiring, pulling cards. It shouldn’t be tiring. He’ll talk to Calla, he decides, about how to treat the deck and about keeping his edges sharp. Persephone left him three things but Calla might give him the last. Ways to keep himself from bleeding out energy, weakening himself, allowing Cabeswater more than he sacrificed. 

Ronan kicks his door and Adam opens it and it’s a mirror of the morning, but Ronan is closer to outright hostility than caution. He’s not trying to pretend this time and there’s a storm behind his eyes. He’s not a saint, he’s a boy with ravens in his dreams, beloved by a forest.

“I’m sorry,” says Adam. “I’m an asshole.” 

“Yeah,” says Ronan, stepping closer. “But so am I.” 

They kiss in the doorway and part of Adam is screaming because Ronan just pulled the worst line imaginable and then kissed him, but most of him is distracted by the kissing part. Ronan’s hands are at his collar, pulling him closer than he ever thought he could be to another person. His mouth isn’t soft, it’s firm and insistent and teeth and tongue. Adam kisses back because he has to, it feels like a fundamental part of being alive, kissing Ronan; it’s as important as breathing, as important as dreaming. They pull apart but Ronan doesn’t let go of him. He keeps hold of his shirt and he presses their foreheads together, their noses, and he looks as close to gentle as Ronan Lynch is able; still sharp, still vicious, but quieter about it. He looks like Cabeswater felt, when they first found it, wild and impossible; proof that something sort of like magic exists. 

“Okay,” says Adam, slightly dazed.

“Okay,” says Ronan, his voice gravelled, more like a question. Adam kisses him this time, soft and swift and sweet, as much of an answer as he can give.

They sit on Adam’s bed, like they had the night before eating pie. It seems too much to lie down, or even to sit at the head of the head of the bed together, so they lean against the wall and their feet hang over the edge. Adam’s collar hangs loose at his neck but he doesn’t care. Ronan has kicked off his boots and his socks don't match and Adam can't help laughing. Surely Ronan Lynch only buys plain black socks, cashmere and lambswool, but one of them is grey and the other is a smudgy red and Adam thinks it's wonderful.

“Snob,” says Ronan, but his cheeks are a little pink.

Of course there is still that thing between them, Gansey’s death and Adam’s lies and everything that still hasn’t happened yet, but they sit together, for awhile, holding hands, until it gets too big to ignore. 

“It’s fucked,” says Ronan heavily, breaking the silence. “This thing with Gansey.”

“I know,” sighs Adam. 

“He says he’s Blue’s _true love_.”

“I _know_.” 

“What does that even mean?”

“I don't know.”

There is another long pause. Adam looks at Ronan’s hands again, at both of their hands, tangled together. The scabs on Ronan’s knuckles are new and Adam can’t think of what to do about that or how to make it better. He leans against Ronan’s shoulder, tucks their arms together closer, and Ronan tenses up, but only for a second.

“So you never even kissed her?” he asks then. Adam can hear his smile, sharp and lush and lazy. “You got no game, Parrish?” 

“Oh, I don’t know,” murmurs Adam, feeling reckless, feeling lightning struck. “I got you into bed.” 

Ronan’s laugh cuts through everything. The day dissolves, Gansey’s death and Blue’s kiss and Calla’s eyes in a mirror. They are two boys tangled in a church named for the saint of purity and Adam smiles and kisses the back of Ronan’s hand, and Ronan hums, deep and low and quiet, like a storm, silent on the horizon, just the imaginings of thunder. 

He stays the night. He brings a pillow and blanket in from the BMW and Adam laughs about that until Ronan kisses him quiet. They lie in the dark together, Ronan on the floor and Adam on the bed, and they talk about dreams and what might happen to them and what will happen and what _can’t_ happen. Their voices turn to shadows and smudges and they fall asleep together. Adam dreams about a sleeping king and Persephone holds up three fingers and he moves wet stones and Blue’s eyes are mirrors and Ronan’s are Chainsaw’s, shining black.

Gansey calls them in the morning and they go to 300 Fox Way together. Ronan keeps his hands in his pockets but he bumps shoulders with Adam when they walk and in Blue’s living room they share a couch, touching shoulders, hips, thighs. Gansey looks at them, so close, so undeniable, and his expression is mixture of a thousand things. Happy and sad and proud and _wanting_. Looking at his face makes Adam feel like he needs to apologise, but it’s thrilling too, having something Gansey wants. He holds his hands tight in his lap so he doesn’t seek out more contact with Ronan. His stomach aches dully. He waits for Gansey to tell them all how he plans to die.

There is nothing to it. They will go deep, underground and they will wake up sleeping kings with a snap of their fingers. The magician, the mirror, the dreamer, and the king. Somewhere along the way Blue will kiss Gansey and Gansey will die and Adam will ask for his life back. Not Noah’s, not Persephone’s, not Jesse Dittley or Kavinsky or the man who murdered Noah. Calla will move mirrors, Maura will burn sage. Artemus will guide them and Gwenllian will sing them songs and they will all be changed when they come up for air. 

“Once more unto the breach, dear friends,” says Gansey, so quiet only Adam hears him, and outside it starts to rain.

**Author's Note:**

> thank you for reading! i live on [tumblr](http://oneangryshot.tumblr.com) if you wanna hi! i'm currently like.. preparing myself for trk.. girding my loins or whatever.. it's gonna be great! i'm sure! plus i'll probably write new things after! the title comes from a sylvia plath poem, cos these boys are nothing if not dramatic. its called mad girl's love song. bebop and beyond with mr jazz is real, i googled it.
> 
> thank you to [memordes](http://archiveofourown.org/users/memorde) who is the greatest person to yell feelings at and the greatest beta and who also writes the greatest fic in the world definitely. you should probably read it!
> 
> fyi the phone persephone gives adam is the nokia 3200 which was my first phone and also the greatest phone in the history of the world cos you could MAKE YOUR OWN COVERS. it was like a whole process but i had fun with it and then i lost it at a music festival and was sad for like.. a really long time. anyway!


End file.
